Starting a business, I also failed in prose.

As a post-80s generation, he said that he was lucky to succeed in starting a business. He founded Walnut Grove without planning for four years in college, left for graduate school at the age of 24, dropped out of Tsinghua University at the age of 25 to become the company's "leading brother", and then resigned, becoming the "first failure" in his life ... He is Li Shubin, ceo of Haolebu, a well-known shoe shopping website, and a legendary entrepreneur.

The first bucket of gold in the university

Speaking of Li Shubin, we have to start from the year he went to college. 1998. That year, Li Shubin, who lives in Dandong, Liaoning Province, originally applied for Tsinghua, but was transferred to the management major of Beijing Broadcasting Institute (now China Communication University) because of a few minutes' difference.

Like many college students, Li Shubin bought a computer as soon as he arrived at the university, but it was not used for studying, but for playing games. Unexpectedly, he originally wanted to be a master of games. Because the computer card machine is old, it is often abandoned by roommates in the game struggle. So, in order to kill time, Li Shubin downloaded some software research from the Internet to learn how to program, make websites and make flash animations. Later, a friend took part in a web contest with his animation and won the first prize and a bonus. 500 yuan and Li Shubin also shared some money. This sweetness gave him the idea of making money from animation, so he contacted several design companies and offered to work part-time, which was of course welcomed by the bosses.

Around 2000, it was during the rapid development of domestic Internet that three domestic portals Sohu, Sina and Netease were successfully listed on NASDAQ. Two years later, Sohu took the lead in announcing profits, and the design company that followed was also a highly profitable industry. Driven by the high rate of return, Li Shubin spent an afternoon making a 30-second animation. I didn't expect the boss to like it very much, and it passed once or twice. Due to long-term off-campus projects, his income quickly rose from the initial "extra money" of several thousand yuan to ten thousand yuan, and he became the richest man in the department.

At this point, Li Shubin gave a wry smile: "In fact, they later refused to let me do it, saying that my animation had copyright problems everywhere, which led them to be sued." He admits that due to the lack of elements, the animation he made was made with tens of thousands of well-known foreign materials, and infringement became inevitable. But he gradually found that animation was actually very tiring physical work, so he gave up design. At this time, he has entered the junior year and made a simple plan for his life: going abroad, taking the postgraduate entrance examination, studying for a master's degree, and finally working as a manager in a multinational company. Therefore, he began to prepare to go abroad until the "9 1 1 incident" that shocked the world shattered his dream of going abroad and failed his career planning.

One of the most successful things in college.

1999 internet forums entered the warring States period, and large and small internet forums appeared constantly, followed by various classified and refined online communities. Xici, Tianya Community and chinaren, a global Chinese virtual community, also flourished during this period. College students who have the most abundant time and the fastest exposure to new things have also set up their own campus bbs, such as Shuimu Tsinghua bbs in Tsinghua and unnamed bbs in Peking University. At that time, although the hardware environment in Guangyuan was good, there was no bbs, which prompted Li Shubin to start thinking about how to establish his own university BBS-he named it "Walnut Forest Community". At that time, he also felt that there were many beautiful women in Guangyuan. After the community is completed, it can provide a platform for more college students to communicate and create opportunities to make friends. However, Li Shubin can only do animation and can't write programs. What should I do? After many twists and turns, he finally contacted the only science and engineering laboratory in the school. After negotiation, the lab finally agreed to help him write the program. Soon, the Walnut Forest Community was finally formally established and quickly developed into a community with daily visits of less than 1 10,000 people to 200,000 people. Its audience covers not only Guangyuan, but also Tsinghua, Peking University and even foreign college students. Many of them met and fell in love and entered the marriage hall. Later, for a while, it became common for Li Shubin to be invited to the wedding.

Zhou, chairman of 360 Company, once said: College students don't lack two things, one is time and the other is hormones. It can be said that Li Shubin made good use of these two things. He used the former to learn flash animation to earn extra money and earn the first pot of gold, and used the latter to establish a famous campus bbs community-Walnut Forest, which became a place for college students to make friends. He himself recalled: "I think the most successful thing in college is to make this thing and attend many such weddings every year. It is meaningless to earn their money, but it is more meaningful to change their destiny and give them happiness. " Perhaps this provides business opportunities for blind date websites such as Lily and Jiayuan. At a roundtable forum, the host also teased Li Shubin and ceo Tian, saying, "Li Shubin seems to be more suitable to be ceo of Lily."

The first failure in life

Near graduation, Li Shubin ushered in an important turning point in his life: in the next semester of his senior year, by chance, Li Shubin successfully applied for an e-commerce company, which was later a "search easy" programmer. Not long after, Li Shubin, who just graduated from China Communication University, took the post of cto and participated in the creation of this company, which has been renamed "Search Easy". In the same year, the Patriots acquired Souyi. During his work, Li Shubin was admitted as a graduate student majoring in computer science in Tsinghua University, but he still chose to handle company affairs while attending school. But what I didn't expect was that two years later, "Search Tesco" faced the embarrassing situation that franchisees no longer paid for renewal and the management team left on a large scale.

In this way, Li Shubin, a computer graduate student in Tsinghua University, fell into confusion again, and the pure theoretical courses of the graduate students were completely contrary to the direction in which he was good at knowledge application. At this time, Feng Jun, the founder of Patriot, found Li Shubin. At that time, Li Shubin was only 25 years old and was about to become the "big brother" of Search Yi. Feng Jun talked all night and finally reached an agreement: Li Shubin bought 5% of the company's shares at his own expense, and he personally "traded" and "searched for it easily". In 2006, Li Shubin dropped out of Tsinghua and became the president of Search Easy. At this time, "Suoyide" is facing difficulties such as tight funds, high personnel costs and the mall model entering a dead end. In order to turn around Gan Kun, Li Shubin successively took measures such as "laying off employees, closing branches and adjusting business model", which made the original company with more than 40 employees laid off and closed all branches. After eight months of suffering, Li Shubin was exhausted, and "Search Easy" finally failed to come back to life.

In 2005, the effect of the four major shopping malls was declining, but the buyout fee was rising. The unqualified products provided by a few franchisees have damaged the reputation of "Search Easy", and the adults in Gome have fought price wars crazily, which has caused fatal trauma to "Search Easy". In 2006, Li Shubin's team failed to bid for the portal mall, and the franchisees dispersed in a hubbub. Since then, the "easy search" has collapsed and the general trend has gone. At the beginning of August of the same year, Li Shubin officially completed the resignation procedures and resigned.

"To tell you the truth, they (Feng Jun, etc. ) are quite calm, I can see that I have no ability to do a good job of' easy search'. Maybe they are just waiting for me, or they haven't found the right person. Before that, I felt very capable. Finally, I feel that I am actually very good at doing something related to products. For a 25-year-old young man, company management is not bad at all, and there is not enough experience in all aspects. But what I gained was a deeper understanding of the reasons for the company's failure. The company is not something that the boss can do well in one sentence, nor is it something that the boss must do well if he wants to work hard and needs coordination.

On September 20 17 10, Li Shubin, who has become the ceo of Haolebu, calmly recalled all kinds of experiences six years ago and said, "This is the first failure in his life."

Dialogue with Li Shubin

Reporter: Why did you drop out of school and become the ceo of Search Yi when you were finally admitted to Tsinghua? What were you thinking?

Li Shubin: I don't think the two are comparable. After graduate school, I want to go out and look for a job, instead of being a boss directly. After graduate school, there may not be such an opportunity. The opportunity is short. The situation at that time was that the boss of Search Yi left and had such an opportunity. If I had a new boss, I wouldn't have such an opportunity; Secondly, a company that is not familiar with me will not ask me to be ceo. I have worked in this company for three years. If I had just graduated from graduate school, I wouldn't have such an opportunity. At that time, I thought that after taking over as ceo, the company would move from a depressed state to a good state. In fact, it is impossible to get out of the predicament. I was 25 years old, and it was difficult to be the ceo of a company at this age.

Reporter: Do you think you are lucky to see that your college life is in a state of no planning, and your business has finally achieved great success without a clear career plan?

Li Shubin: There must be some luck, three points, seven points. Lucky factor accounts for at least three or four points, possibly xx, or even higher. But it also needs personal ability to support it. If I couldn't program at school, Search Yi wouldn't come to me. Programming and writing programs have laid a certain foundation for my entrepreneurship. Want to start an internet company, can't write programs, can't design, only tens of thousands of dollars, can't afford to hire programmers. How can we succeed in starting a business? There must be trial and error costs in starting a business. If 50 thousand yuan doesn't even cost a trial and error, on the contrary, if you know some programming and design, the cost of trial and error is zero and the cost is the lowest. Therefore, the most basic ability of an entrepreneur is that you can do it without recruiting people.

Reporter: What do you think is unique about your entrepreneurial success? Or have any unique qualities?

Li Shubin: I don't like asking for help. I try my best to do it myself. Because I don't want to deal with others, if I can't get the desired effect by asking others for help, I'm embarrassed to say it, and it's not good to make do with it. It's best to do what I think is best. Entrepreneurship is actually not a particularly profound thing. Don't concentrate on Baidu. You can still do something practical and applied. For example, making a website is still very simple. At the beginning of the company, two or three people asked for the most basic ability to do things well, but when the company you founded grew to hundreds of people, you would definitely not be able to do even the most basic things well.

Reporter: Internet entrepreneurs all have the nature of * * *, either technical background or management background? Is the threshold for college students' entrepreneurship in the Internet industry relatively low?

Li Shubin: Yes, compared with traditional industries, the threshold of the Internet for college students is really low. One person can do it. Many projects are done by one or two people. I prefer technical performance. Like Zhang Chaoyang, Ding Lei, Ma and Zhou, they are all programmers. It is relatively easy for people with technical background to start a business, but Ma Yun is an exception. He was born in management, but Ma Yun has a group of eighteen arhats who will follow him to the death. If you are a grassroots entrepreneur with a management background, you may encounter practical embarrassment and need a long management foundation. As a young man, how can you have such great personality charm that one or two people can follow you in technology and products, but you can't give others so much money? If the management background reaches a very advanced level, it is easy for a group of technical talents to follow him or get venture capital smoothly when he starts a business. If you are a technical entrepreneur, you will have the inherent advantages of technology, and a large part of your work can be done by yourself. For example, technology Bill Gates, Jobs and their partners are all engineers, and the cost of starting a business is very low.

Reporter: Now more and more college students start their own businesses, but few succeed. What conditions do you think college students should have to start a business?

Li Shubin: First of all, the economic conditions are relatively good. If you have no income and no place to live, where can you start a business? Therefore, if you want to start a business, the family conditions are relatively relaxed, because people are too poor, they often make some radical moves. At least for a while, they don't worry about food and clothing and concentrate on starting a business. They don't agree with the so-called sleeping on the street and having a meal to start a business. Although that spirit is worth advocating, if they are bound by these factors, they have no entrepreneurial experience at all. Entrepreneurship needs to study wholeheartedly and not be disturbed by unnecessary external factors. Secondly, you need a certain amount of start-up capital, even if this part of the capital is very small, but as long as you can do a large part of things, even a little money will play a great role, and you are afraid that you can't do anything in fact, just one idea, it is very expensive to hire everything. In order to save costs, college students can try to start their own businesses first, and then test whether others are doing well.

Reporter: According to media reports, the average success rate of college students in China is 3%, while the success rate in the United States is as high as 20%. Why do you think the gap is so big?

Li Shubin: First, the welfare benefits of American college students are very good. At the beginning of their business, they can get some aid and choose a lot. Unlike China, there are no benefits. I won't prepare an apartment for you just because you start a business and sleep on the street. Different from European and American churches, China college students start their own businesses for the sake of money, which is different from the United States. American college students can go to Africa to observe gorillas for their ideals, while China can. Second, the United States is more open and can participate in many cooperative projects. For example, you can find a partner to give him 50% of the shares, or find someone with complementary abilities. China people would rather spend their money on starting a business than share it with others, thinking that they are completely in control, so the success rate is definitely zero. If you do something and cooperate with others to become bigger and stronger, let alone 50%, 5% is a big share. Therefore, for the purpose, college students in China start their own businesses for the sake of starting their own businesses. Even if they don't like it, they have to do it. I feel that they have found a business point that can make money, but they don't understand it at all. Failure is inevitable. Most American college students start their own businesses for interest, so it is easier to succeed if they have the necessary welfare protection, and it is easier to succeed if they cooperate with very open people. In China, college students are in a state of separation, unwilling to cooperate and share with others, and no one will support or even attack you, so it is difficult to find a partner, which leads to the failure of starting a business.